Save our food standards: why we still need action

I have a very good sense of taste, which is annoying to the extent that I can’t bear supermarket tomatoes, especially organic ones. I’m told it’s quite legal to use this foul-tasting spray on organic food, and 99% of people can’t taste it. It’s time we went back to smaller and more carefully maintained greenhouses/fields of mass production

We differ in what we can smell and taste. It’s well known that some people can smell cyanide and others not, and there is a genetic reason for this. I am strongly affected by the smell of sulphur dioxide/sulphites, which make many white wines undrinkable and dried apricots very unpleasant.

Organic farmers cannot use synthetic chemicals but can use others that occur naturally. The customer is not told which chemicals are used in ordinary or organic farming. The best solution might be to grow your own tomatoes, which can be done without a greenhouse. They will taste better if they are ripened before picking. Most supermarket tomatoes are picked before they are ripe and artificially ripened, so can be rather tasteless.

It seems to be hit and miss with supermarket salad produce. Our Sainsbury’s delivery on Tuesday included some British tomatoes that smelled and tasted very good. The skins were a bit thick but otherwise they were excellent. Likewise some celery [grown in the Fens and still showing the black soil near the root] which had that lovely old-fashioned taste.

We weren’t so pleased with some strawberries, however, which were overlarge and lacked the traditional English strawberry smell and taste. They were very edible, though, and not wasted.

I am often disappointed by the lack of a “traditional” strawberry flavour. It may be the varieties grown commercially for yield rather than taste, or because they are grown by hydroponics rather than in soil.

They taste better grown in the garden, warmed by the sun. That is, if you can get to them before the slugs and birds.

I think some of the nicest flavour comes from alpine strawberries. I’ve grown a batch of plants from seed this year and look forward to seeing a bit of a crop next year. Their problem is they are so small; a lot of picking is involved.

I thoroughly agree with ALL ingredients shown on all food products including hidden ingredients.

Although the order of an ingredient list is a guide to contents with main ingredients first, it is often misleading so I would like to see the percentage of ingredients also shown. Particularly important for those controlling their diets is added sugar.

There is currently no requirement to declare enzymes used as ‘processing aids’ in manufacture of foods. I believe that they should be declared.

What matters for diabetics etc. is total sugar rather than added sugar. I knew a chap who drank unsweetened fruit juice throughout the day and I was not surprised when he announced he had developed type 2 diabetes. I would like to see the amounts of all ingredients in foods listed but I don’t think the manufacturers would be keen to do this.

Fructose is preferable to refined sugar but diabetics have to be sensible and do their own research. A glass of orange juice for breakfast was one of the first things my other half gave up when he was diagnosed.

We aim for not more than 4% sugars in anything with total carbs also taken into consideration. An apple contains roughly 14 grams of carbs with about 10 grams of sugar, more than twice our aim, but rather more healthy than eating 2 teaspoons of granulated sugar.

Not many people would eat several oranges or apples so I suggest that they are a better alternative to drinking glasses of fruit juice. The presence of complex carbohydrates in fruit helps slow metabolism, which is important for diabetics and worthwhile for the rest of us.

It is questionable whether the UK food standards are acceptably high in the first place. The Red Tractor scheme for example seems to set very low standards.

As we appear not to properly enforce our standards (2 Sisters, horsemeat, food outlet hygiene, for example) I’d suggest we need to put our own house in order and ensure the standards we aspire to are actually achieved.

There are plenty of examples of our failings in the food industry malcolm.

As long as there are cost savings to be made by cutting corners there is a danger of standards declining and Alfa has given examples of problem areas below. The government has moved towards trusting larger companies to police their food standards under their Regulating our Future initiative.

This reminds me of the way that companies are working with National Trading Standards and with a selected local TS office under a Primary Authority agreement. None of this has helped with stopping the sale of products with the wrong plug.

A good post, Alfa. Obsession, blinkered, partisan could be used to describe a number of campaign strategies.

As far as I know, giving chicken a chlorine wash is not hazardous to the consumer. Is it? The problem is what it is said to counteract – poor conditions in which they are reared. If so then investigate and report on those poor conditions and upon how widespread they are, so we can decide if they impact on the consumer and how bad they are for the birds.

The huge demand for meat cannot be satisfied only by birds being allowed to roam freely in green pastures. Unfortunately some form of intensive rearing is necessary, unless we abandon chicken to all but the better off. Our own “Red Tractor” scheme is hardly generous in considering the chickens’ lifestyle and welfare. I think we should concentrate on putting our own house in order particularly when we are largely self sufficient in chicken.

Cut down on the number of UK fast food chains and that is entirely achievable Malcolm. Most use imported chicken anyway. There are currently 800 mega-farms in the U.K so there should be enough to become self sufficient. Fast food chains with their over generous portions are also adding to the obesity epidemic

Thanks malcolm, my thoughts exactly.

I expect most of us can think of fields that never seem to be used for anything.

Some of these will be farmers paid not to farm.

But many of them will be owned by property developers sitting on them until they can get planning permission for new housing estates. They will have been bought cheap when their only use would have been agricultural and I would suggest this practice should be made illegal and the land returned to farming. With careful planning, agricultural land around towns and villages could sustain a lot of local demand with excess sent to the cities. Greenhouses, solar energy, wind power and storage batteries could reduce our reliance on Spain and the unnecessary costs of transportation.

I do not think mega-farms are a good thing, firstly for the welfare of the animals but also the diseases and health problems associated with intensive rearing. We do not want to get to the situation where all our food groups are in the hands of only a few.

I found this cattle mega farm in Kent that appears on a few reports:
Put this into google maps:
51.394630, 0.875221
The cows are surrounded by greenery but get none.

Disinfection of chicken carcasses (chlorine treatment etc.) is not just done as mitigation of poor animal husbandry. Even birds that are not intensively farmed can carry very high numbers of bacteria in their bowels and may show no symptoms of disease. When we were discussing campylobacter in chicken I learned that organic chicken reared under non-intensive conditions could carry more bacteria simply because the birds live longer, allowing more opportunity for pathogenic bacteria to colonise their bowels.

During processing of chicken carcasses, faecal matter from these birds is spread to birds that were not contaminated. Disinfection is used in the US and in some countries (but not in Europe) to reduce the extent of contamination. If lumps of faecal matter remain after washing, the disinfectant will not penetrate them.

Here is a recent briefing paper from the Food Research Collaboration that I find interesting: https://foodresearch.org.uk/download/14720/

It identifies the disinfectants used in chicken processing in the US as not just chlorinated water but also with five other chemical disinfectants (acidified sodium chlorite, peroxyacetic acid, cetylpyridium chloride, lactic acid, and trisodium phosphate). (Peroxyacetic acid is another name for peracetic acid, which has been mentioned earlier.)

“Recently, strong evidence emerged indicating that chlorine washing is not an effective disinfectant. Professor Keevil and colleagues at Southampton University published an important paper in spring 2018 showing, with leaf vegetables, that chlorine washing does not eliminate the bacteria that cause food poisoning. Chlorine washing, they found, merely blocks the standard test method by which the presence of such bacteria should be revealed. So the bacteria remain present on the food, and able to cause serious types of food poisoning. This outcome can be not just very unpleasant but even fatal.”

Animal husbandry could be improved but so could the chicken processing plants.

Here is another view on the US UK debate https://briefingsforbritain.co.uk/fact-checking-the-bbc-fact-checkers/

The whole issue seems not at all straightforward. As in many campaigns you can pick and choose between “facts” and “statistics” and their interpretation to best suit your case. It would be useful if someone unbiased and with some knowledge could put together as balanced a summary as possible, avoiding emotive wording. It probably would not make an entertaining read but might better inform us in reaching a conclusion.

When you are bombarded with a multitude of figures and statistics from different sources, albeit they may be from professional people, a debate starts to lose its purpose and integrity as you are unable to see the forest for the trees.

When comparing US and UK/EU percentages and numbers of salmonella and campylobacter outbreaks, until you are certain they are based on pre chlorinated or post chlorinated statistics they are unlikely to give an accurate assessment of the real figures.

Also, are the US figures based solely on the 90% of non-chlorinated chickens or both 90% + 10% chlorinated combined? We are led to believe there are only 2% of salmonella and/or campylobacter outbreaks in the US in comparison with the EU/UK numbers which are much higher at about 15% – 20%. The true percentages are going to be quite different given there are probably more people that develop the symptoms but don’t report it.

I don’t think we will ever receive the exact numbers of people infected on either side, but the final decision to proceed with any trade deal with the US will depend upon the skill and the accomplishment of the negotiators acting for the two countries and the input of the regulators.

That is my main concern. I don’t think there is any particular danger from eating chicken meat that has been processed the American way using chemical disinfection but it’s a short cut on more careful husbandry that obviously costs more to perform so to that extent it could undermine UK agriculture which has higher standards.

As I have said before, I don’t expect much American chicken to end up on our domestic dining tables if a trade agreement allows it to be imported, but it would almost certainly become a bulk commodity import and be used in catering establishments and commercially from school dinners, staff canteens, hospitals and care homes to restaurants, ready meals, manufactured sandwiches, and other forms of processed food. Since that is possibly the biggest slice of the market in the UK it would be ripe for exploitation by the US food industry.

I agree that we should ensure that all UK production should be brought up to the best standard, but the fact that it might still fall short here and there should not be used as an excuse to import meat that does not fully meet the UK requirements. I also agree that we should aim to raise home-reared volumes so the UK becomes 100% self-sufficient in poultry production.

If 75% of the UK market is supplied with home-produced chicken already I presume that is because it is competitively priced. If so, why is it assumed that we will be flooded with US imports? We import from Poland and Thailand already; would they be more expensive than the US?

I’d look forward to our chicken magnates producing more still, and to our food inspection services ensuring they stick to our standards.

However, meat in the EU and UK is protected from imports in two ways, high tariffs of up to 50% and by food standards. The current UK proposal is a dual tariffs system, a high tariff on food of lower standard, and a less high one on compliant food. This is not only, presumably, to protect our food standards but our home farming industry that is essential to our future.

I would want to see the standards in the UK set to protect our consumers from anything that could be a threat to our health. We need to be objective about this. We should also consider how much animal conditions matter to us and exactly how we expect to ensure minimum standards we require are actually complied with outside the UK. If we buy from EU states we rely on their supervision, but as we see in the UK this is not foolproof.

I also accept that we need to protect home production but hopefully this will be sensibly administered and not used to enrich producers, the danger with indiscriminate support.

Hi Michael, I think a major concern here is that we can only exercise our supreme weapon of customer choice if we have access to the information needed to allow us to make informed choices.

In this topic, this comes down to food labelling and to the extent or otherwise of the information that must be provided there.

As an example, I have a colleague who is allergic to certain types of rapeseed oil. Under current UK food labelling regimes, he is able to determine which products contain rapeseed oil and then avoid them.

As we have seen before, Red Tractor is hardly anything to celebrate.

According to this website our standards for animal welfare are generally better than those in the US: https://api.worldanimalprotection.org

There is no need to eat meat and in the past five or six years I have not missed eating chicken.

I don’t see that as a reason to justify low standards here.

Many will continue to eat meat and use animal products like cheese, milk and eggs, so paying attention to standards of animal welfare is important.

I’m not trying to justify poor standards, Malcolm, and I want to see improvements.

As I’ve said before, I want us to be self-sufficient in our food supply as far as possible. I wonder if those involved in negotiating trade deals know much about animal welfare.